"You have put flesh on the Irish saying, `ar scath a cheile a mhair eann na daoine'," the President, Mrs McAleese, told the social partners at a special reception in the grounds of Aras an Uachtarain yesterday afternoon.
The first such invitation to the Park came against a backdrop of mounting concern over the future prospects of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.
Mrs McAleese stressed the fairness aspect of social partnership and welcomed the fact that the process has been extended to include the community and voluntary sectors in recent years. They were there to bask in the sunshine alongside senior civil servants, leaders of the trade-union movement, business and the farming community. The only comparable event was in 1994 when the former president, Mrs Mary Robinson, invited trade union leaders to the Park on May Day to mark the introduction of the new bank holiday and the centenary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
On that occasion, trade-union leaders spent most of their time lobbying each other for votes in the forthcoming ICTU executive elections.
This time the main topic of debate was next Thursday's plenary session of the PPF in Dublin Castle.
In case the warm weather, cocktail service and lilting jazz solos of Brian Dunning proved too soporific, the President reminded her audience of the "truly inspiring social, as well as economic, story" of social partnership in Ireland since 1987.
"A major test for the future is whether we have the capacity to renew the strengths from which growth emerged," she said.
Social partnership had "widespread legitimacy", not just because it had delivered results, but because of its fair-minded approach to issues. The social partners had not only given priority to economic growth, but used that growth to target problems such as long-term unemployment.
"But social partnership is not a chemical formula. It is a living process involving effort and imagination on the part of a large number of people. It was to celebrate that effort and commitment that I invited you here today.
"I would like to thank you on behalf of the wider public whose interests have been well served in recent years by your work."